Mayor Adams announces crackdown on unlicensed NYC waste haulers with mob ties
Mayor Adams and other local officials announced a takedown of three illegal garbage hauling companies in the city Wednesday — and one of the seedy firms has documented mob ties.
The companies, LMC Trucking Corp., Ferreira Construction Co. and Bond Civil & Utility Construction Inc., have been hauling trash as part of a construction project at John F. Kennedy Airport without required licenses from the Business Integrity Commission, Adams said during a press conference at JFK.
“We cannot allow commercial waste hauling to become a dirty business,” said Adams, who was joined by Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, Business Integrity Commission Chairwoman Elizabeth Crotty and Port Authority Inspector General John Gay.
“New Yorkers deserve clean business practices in every industry, and on my watch, that’s what they will get. We will not tolerate criminal activity that threatens our public safety or the integrity of a critical industry.”
Hauling commercial waste without a license from BIC is punishable by up to six months in prison. Offenders can also face criminal fines of upward of $10,000, or $5,000 levies for every day of illegal hauling.
Gay, whose agency helped BIC investigate the illicit business trio, said that the companies were hired by Delta Airlines as part of construction work it was doing on the airport’s fourth terminal.
But Gay stressed that Delta is not being accused of any wrongdoing as it relates to contracting the unlicensed firms.
“I’m not suggesting it’s anybody’s fault here except the persons who are charged,” he said.
Crotty said the most concerning of the three companies is LMC Trucking Corp., which kept hauling waste even though it was denied a license from her commission in 2020 due the company principal’s connections to the Gambino crime family.
Testifying under oath in an unrelated court case in 2019, the principal, William Cioffi, admitted he paid off a Gambino captain to get waste management contracts, thinking he “would get more trucking work if he did so,” according to a decision issued by BIC.
“LMC Trucking Corp. is an especially egregious case,” Crotty said.
Unlicensed commercial waste management emerged as a major issue in 2018 after Sanitation Salvage, one of the city’s largest haulers at the time, was stripped of its BIC license in the wake of its drivers being involved in several fatal vehicle crashes.
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said the crackdown on the illicit garbage runners will make JFK safer.
“It is imperative that we keep the busiest port on the East Coast operating safely and with the utmost integrity,” Sewell said. “Not only is it our responsibility, it is critical to the infrastructure, economy and vitality of our nation.”
